“But What About the Fire?” by Liam Callanan

May 19, 2015

Faculty member Liam Callanan writes about Adam Haslett’s “Notes to my Biographer” for Stories We Love at Fiction Writer’s Review:

I’m haunted by fire. Not that kind. The kind that forms the harrowing core of Adam Haslett’s “Notes to my Biographer,” which examines the very large life led by its protagonist, Franklin Caldwell Singer, and the metaphor that comes to consume him.

Singer is loud, tendentious company—and thus an incredibly risky character to anchor this story. But the result is marvelous [or: But the risk more than pays off], even if (or especially because) Haslett’s success requires him to break almost every rule there is about writing stories, starting with “show, don’t tell,” starting with the story’s very first lines.